I love the fact that we owe star trek primarily to Lucille ball

Roddenberry went on to marry Majel Barrett. She also is the voice for the computer in the shows. Not to mention Deanna Troi’s mother in TNG. Even though she was removed as Number One after the first episode, she still had quite the impact on the franchise.

Jeffrey Hunter wasn't fired, he decided not to return to the series. In his contract, he was obligated to return if the show went into production or if the pilot was turned into a TV movie, calling for extra scenes to be filmed. Since NBC ordered a second pilot, Hunter was not under contractual obligation to continue working Star Trek. Desilu tried many times to rehire him at first, but all their offers were refused.

When Startrek TOS became available on Netflix, I started with The Cage. I was mesmerized by the storyline and storytelling. So glad I started on The Cage.

Majel Barrett went on to play McCoys Nurse Chapel through the entire run of the show and the motion picture as well as the ships computer, she wasn't fired from the show, she also then went on to play Lwaxana Troi in TNG and DS9

Jeffrey Hunter (Christopher Pike) wasn't fired. He declined to return for the second pilot. He wanted to focus on his movie career instead.

I cant imagine what life would be like if star trek never happened. it's a huge part of my memories watching the original star trek with my dad when i was a kid.

The original title of the pilot was "The Menagerie". It was only renamed "The Cage" when it went on to be released separately from the the famous two-parter in TOS, which by then had inherited the original name. Also, Majel Barrett wasn't Rodenberry's girlfriend at the time of filming the original - she was his mistress, a potential scandal that was an open secret in the studio at the time. The bigwigs would have been perfectly happy with a female as the second in command, they just wanted someone other than Majel. Kudos for not falling into the trap that refilming a pilot was somehow unusual or unique to Star Trek though.

I recall the network did not like Spock either hence the " Get rid of the guy with the ears " comment. Glad Gene stuck to his guns there :)

I rewatched the pilot a ton of times on Netflix, I never knew they redid it by the next pilot, I just thought it went forward in time with Pike being shown later. They managed to patch up the canon with the managerie episodes and i didnt noticed

I think it's interesting how the pilot of TOS is being honoured in a way with the new series coming out next year I think, Star Trek Strange New Worlds, which is going to be an episodic Star Trek show about the crew Pike captained. It has Pike, Spock and Una all there in the show as main characters so in some way it's coming full circle.

I loved The Menagerie precisely because it incorporated the original pilot into the series. Although it was really done because they were short on scripts during the first season, and the 2-parter gave them breathing room to come up with more usable scripts to finish the season.

Hundreds of thousands of people DID already know this.

Yes, as a character in Star Trek, Spock was the only returning character from the original pilot. However, both Majel Barret (Nurse Chapel) and George Takei (Sulu) returned to the series as other characters.

As a young minority Star Trek lead me to believe that nothing could stop me from rising above my circumstances! And so I did.

Wow. I never knew Lucille Ball had such a connection to Star Trek history.

In the small town where my parents and I lived in the mid-1960s, color TVs weren’t the norm as yet. My parents had saved and saved to buy one, so when TOS aired in that time........ WOW, so special!! TOS series became my dad’s favorite TV show because it had in our future ‘world peace’. He had joined the USN the day after Pearl Harbor and had served his WWII time in the Pacific (had nightmares due to it too). Spock is my favorite and as that young teen girl back then, my wall had a poster of him.

Honestly my favorite scenes in TOS is when Kirk, Spock and bones shit talk with each other, mostly at Spock’s expense. Those times you could really see the dynamic story potential of such well written characters.

My favorite part of the pilot was when at some point towards the end the doctor breaks out his little kit and mixes up martinis for he and Pike.

I downvoted this video simply because it was wrong about the NBC execs wanting to keep Spock. It was Gene that insisted he be kept. NBC wanted to "delete the martian". Also Jeff Hunter wasn't fired. He just refused to come back for a second pilot and wanted to do movies instead.

Don't get me wrong I like the video. But......This is called "The Very Different Version Of Star Trek You Never Saw",but it not talk about the show I never saw. You know the one with Pike,Spock,and Number One. That is the Trek I never saw. I was born in 1966(the same year it was put on TV) 55 years age. So I've been watching all my life. I thought this video was going to be about what Trek would have been like with out Kirk,McCoy, Scotty and the rest of the crew we all know. Plus I saw The Cage(mixed BW and Color cut) back in the 90's and knew about it back in the 80's.

I heard that the reason the "suits" didn't keep Number One was that they didn't like Majel's acting or the fact that she was Gene's mistress at the time. They didn't think she should play a main role. However, they agreed to accept her in the fairly minor recurring role of Nurse Chapel.

Of you’re going to do more videos like this, I’d be very interested in a video about the character change between Prescription: Murder and Columbo. The change in Columbo’s personality is so drastic it would be very interesting to compare.

People keep repeating the "Execs didnt want a woman as second-in-command". Actually, the people involved have stated that Roddenberry was told Majel Barrett (as married Gene's mistress) was an inappropriate choice. Plus, they say, at the time, she was not a very good actress.

Oh heck you're crossing over into my territory! Great video, wonderful coverage of the story! ^.^

Keep this content gold my guy love your work. The discord love u also.

"NBC fired everyone involved in the original pilot except for one guy - Spock" False - Bob Johnson was the voice of the first Talosian (played by Meg Wyllie) in "The Cage" and played the role of Transporter Chief Pitcairn in "The Menagerie." He did voice work in other Star Trek The Original Series episodes including; Provider 3 in "The Gamesters of Triskelion", Starbase 6 Commander in "The Immunity Syndrome", and ground control in "Assignment Earth". Tom Curtis did voice work in "The Cage", played Jon Daily in "The Menagerie", and the part of Corrigan in "Court Martial".

We could have easily still had Star Wars without Star Trek but we certainly would not have had the Star Trek movies without Star Wars (as Paramount decided to scrap the new Star Trek show and make a Star Trek movie after they saw the wild success of Star Wars).

1:04 “It was a long journey” So you could say it was a long road getting from there to here? 😉

I love at the end, your final lines, you so carefully say what needs to be said…without saying it.

Lovely presentation. Thank you for the Trek love :)

Hunter wasn't fired he didn't want to do a series he wanted to do movies😊

Big Brain Alien: "Its necessary to perpetuate the species." Picard: "You realize the Federation has entire planets of people perpetuating the species."

As someone who only got into Star Trek a few months ago, watching "The Cage" first and then the "actual" first episode confused me so much because where the heck did everyone except Spock go? I only realised afterwards lol

" But few probably know what led to everyone but Spock being replaced with a new crew" Well, they didn't replace Majel Barret, although they gave her a new role. It's because Roddenberry was "dating" her.

I'm impressed with this informative video. My brother Robert is a big fan of Star Trek.

Hahaha, the Wilhelm scream in The Lieutenant! Nice touch :)

Your last words in this video are so true. Thanks, I needed to hear them today.

There is a story that filming an episode a cameraman got sick or had to leave for some reason. Lucy was there in a full evening gown for a later formal engagement. The cameraman could not be replaced soon enough so she got behind the camera and shot the episode.

You debunked some myths, but my understanding is that the letter-writing campaign is also likely a myth. There was such a campaign, but it's far from certain that TOS was ever on the verge of cancellation, and when NBC announced the renewal in context of the campaign, the implication was more of "stop writing to us" rather than "we listened to you."

Star Wars took heavy inspiration from Frank Herbert's classic Sci-Fi novel "Dune" as well as comics of the time. Star Wars would still absolutely exist even without Star Trek, albeit in an alternate form.

Majel Barrett, who played Number 1, was recast as Nurse Chapel.

Great video.

"Studios often don't have their hands of the pulse of the bodies they're bearing." 100% accurate. There thousands of shows we could say about this. But as far as Sci fi is concerned... I start that list with Firefly.

The first episode is awesome! One of the best.

This explains why Leonard Nimoy argued that the Star Trek story was about him due to him being in every episode with a long dialogue .

The pilot has been available for awhile

Jeffrey Hunter did so well in the role of Capt. Christopher Pike. This is why there is so much interest in the character until now, and the latest TV iteration of ST features him in the lead. Too bad Hunter could not or did not return to the part during his time.

2 views? Never been this early, should i come back?

Title: The Very Different Version Of Star Trek You Never Saw The Episode: Literally the first episode on Netflix.

FYI: If you own the Season 3 of Star Trek TOS the Original Pilot titled ‘The Cage’ is on the 6th Disc both the Original Cut and the Extended Cut of that Episode on the same Disc. And as for that ‘Where No Man Has Gone Before’ maybe the Pilot for the Kirk Version of Star Trek TOS but it is always Listed as the Third Episode after ‘The Man Trap’ and ‘Charlie X’

Since you said that Star Trek laid the foundation for all the modern-day sci-fi franchises, I'm just going to mention that Doctor Who was launched years before the original Star Trek, and there are even a few Star Trek episodes and concepts that are dangerously close to Doctor Who ones (the most notable one being the Borg)

Of course, Leonard Nimoy wasn't the only actor to make the jump to ST:OS. Majel Barrett also made the jump. But not as Number 1, but as the ship's computer, and later as Nurse Chapel as well as Lwaxana Troi in ST:NG.

Spock is Star Trek, Star Trek is Spock now and forever linked. When ever I think, or hear or even say the word Star Trek the first and only person in my mind is Spock.

There were two who were not fired: Leonard Nimoy and Majel Barrett (XO in the pilot episode and Nurse Chappel in TOS).

LOL, that Chris Pine footage was from SNL

Is this channel related to nerdwriter1?

They didn’t fire Majel Barret (Gene Roddenberry’s wife.) They recast her as Nurse Chappell.

The studio told Roddenberry to ditch number one because the test audience didn’t like her. Ironically, the women in the test audience didn’t like her because she dared to be pikes equal while talking to him.

Fun fact.. Leonard nimoy did the voice of decepticon commander "Galvatron" in the 1986 animated transformers movie and also voiced "seintinal prime" in the live action transformers movie Dark of the moon.

It was such a huge step up from previous corny and low tech designed sci fi movies ( I say that excluding the pilot which was a little like previous stuff ) it was amazing

I saw this title and immediately thought "jokes on you, of course I've seen that."

I saw episodes of "The Lieutenant" recently. Excellent show. Many of the actors from this show also appeared in Star Trek.

"Basically the whole cast was replaced.' Sulu- "What about me?"

Nice video -

It took sixteen years to bring back Doctor Who because the bigwigs at the BBC didn't realise what they had. The modern series has been successful all over the world and a ton of merchandising is sold every year. Doctor Who is finally a pop culture icon

Donald Glover would make a good Miles Morales though

When The Cage was originally released on video it was in B&W and colour. Pretty sure there were two releases. The missing colour segments were later found and the pilot was restored and released to video. That was back either in the late 80s or early 90s. The Cage does suffer from poor audio in places, I assume these were the previously missing colour segments?

Maybe they fired everyone but they brought back the actress (Majel Barrett) shown @0:35 at the far right. Any Star Trek fan will recognize her in everything from the original series (nurse Chapel) to the Next Generation (Lwaxana Troy) and even the video games!

Majel Barrett was also on the initial pilot. She changed roles but was not fired. She was giver a smaller role but was not fired. Leonard Nimoy also changed roles.

When I was in high school, I found the beta tape my dad recorded when this pilot was aired. It was an event hosted by Patrick Stewart, with a majority of it being The Cage and then some promos for the new series, The Next Generation. I liked it.

"Wilhelm scream" at @1:32 You just couldn't help yourselves.

roddenberry's original draft was originally titled the cage and appears in it's entirety in Steven e. Whitfields book the making of star trek

After the first pilot, NBC execs said "Get rid of the guy with the ears." Gene, of course, refused.

They hadn't gotten the full cast together by the time the filmed the first episode "Where No Man Has Gone Before", which was aired third. In fact, some of the actors look like they were left overs from the pilot, which is why that episode looks strange compared to the previous two.

Spock was not the only character to make an appearance in both the original pilot and then TOS. It can be argued that Geologic Technician Fisher (played by Edward Madden) appears in both as well.

This is one show that I don’t remember as a youngster back in the late 1960”s!I just remember the re-runs of;Star Trek!The re-runs had grown on me as a teenager,too,way back in the late 1970”s.Now,the Hereo’s and Icon”s channel show”s Star ⭐️ Trek on the weekend’s on Saturday evening’s.Of course,there’s still those Star Trek collectable’s that they sell at the used book 📕 store!

Good beginning and middle, but the concluding post-amble was Ring Around the Rosie. Studios back in the day evaluated line-ups, not shows. It wasn't like KZfaq where you can still push "publish" to share a video with just two family members and a devoted Border Collie with with an assistive-input paw glove. A lot of people wanted those broadcast hours, and there were a lot of bills to pay when the dust settled under the sign-off colour bars.

The editor seemed to have fun with this video!

It's been a long road. Getting from there to here. 😂

They also kept Gene's wife...Majal.

Seems to me that someone forgot that Majel Barrett, who played Number one was also nurse Chapel, and went on to be Roxann Troy on STNG.

Fantastic how much Star Trek tech has and is becoming real!

Actually, Spock was not the only carryover. The actress cased Number One, later known as nurse Chapel, Majel Barrett went on to appear in 210 episodes +7 movies.

Fascinating (Raised eyebrow)

Technically they kept 2 actors/actresses. Spock and Number One; who became Nurse Chapel.

Few things: 1) Star Trek was *not* a ratings sensation. It never spiked above 54th in the Nielsen Ratings of the time. 2) There were two letter writing campaigns. Star Trek was cancelled *twice*. Once after the first season, and again after the second. What actually saved it was that RCA, then parent company of NBC said that they wanted the show to stay on the air because people were buying color TVs just to watch it. 3) The Writer's Strike of 1968, and internal strife (thanks to Gene Roddenberry being "absentee dad" in season 3, and the subsequent hiring of Fred Frieberger as Executive Producer/Showrunner) killed Star Trek. In fact, there was supposed to be one more episode after "Turnabout Intruder", but NBC told them *not* to bother filming it. Most people didn't even watch the final episode first run because it was aired 3 months after the penultimate episode ("All Our Yesterdays"). 4) Star Trek's second go-round had not one, but THREE pilots submitted: "Where No Man Has Gone Before", "The Corbomite Maneuver" and "The Man Trap". NBC bought all of them. Then aired them out of order. On September 8, 1966, the first episode aired was "The Man Trap", not "Where No Man Has Gone Before". This really confused people because they inexplicably switched the entire cast around again. 5) In 1972, NBC apparently got a new computer algorithm to compute demographic data and included new categories in the Nielsens. With this new data, Star Trek actually scored 2-3x better than they thought and realized they had cancelled a potential gold mine. They asked Gene Roddenberry if he still had access to the old sets and wardrobe. Sadly, Gene responded, it was all burned when the show was finally cancelled as per tradition (or sold or lost). Since NBC was run by skinflints, they instead commissioned The Animated Series as an "official continuation" of the series. I love these nostalgic retrospectives. But when you either gloss over or completely misrepresent key details (there's more, but the point is made), especially given that this show is one of the most thoroughly compiled, researched, and preserved pieces of science fiction in television history (one that has an extensively monitored and updated wiki behind it to chronicle this information), it makes mistakes or omissions much more egregious. And I've yet to find one that is 100% correct in any respect. Somewhat alarming. That said, I did enjoy your video, even if it seems I did not from this lol

Just when I thought I knew Star Trek. Lol! I thought September 8, 1966 was the airdate and the "pilot" that sold the series was "The Man Trap" which if memory serves was the 6th episode in production order.

Would love to see "why the wheel of time didn't work"

I love Star Trek and saw this episode and never knew it was the pilot.

Funny, that at 0:47 you used part of the German opening titles to TNG.

But...it wasn't just Leonard Nimoy as Spock who stayed on after the first pilot but also Mrs. Rodenberry. First pilot she was the 1st "Number 1"/ 2nd in command before she was a starfleet nurse (& later R. Troi + TNG Enterprise D computer voice) for the remainder TOS.

oh thank god it's this guy

04:20 actually Desilu had sunk a lot of money into that pilot and needed to recoup that, hence Lucille Ball lobbying so hard for it.

"There's an argument to be made we wouldn't have Star Wars if not for Star Trek." ...then proceeds to to show that their wouldn't be a Star Wars if not for Lucille Ball.

Imagine the would-be Kirk seeing Shatner go to space atop Bezos... "space shaft". "That could be me!"

One of the great shows the networks canceled too soon. Like 'Firefly,' another science fiction show with a great cast and interesting premise. I guess they needed more cop shows... /s

Excuse me doctor who is the longest running sci fi show

Majel Barrett was beautiful!

According to Roddenberry, women at the Cage test screening didn't like Majel Barrett as Number One and left comments like, "Who does she think she is?".